SBIR Phase I: Next Generation Wireless Sensor System for Environmental Monitoring

This Small Business Innovative Research Program (SBIR) Phase I project aims to revolutionize, in situ, wireless atmospheric sensing by developing a system of airborne probes that gather data as they drift passively through the air with no active propulsion or flight. The novel probe design leverages miniaturization as well as integration electronic components to minimize complexity, cost, size, mass, terminal velocity, and power consumption. Two other elements that comprise the system include deployment mechanisms and interrogation platforms to communicate with probes and retrieve sensor data. Data from by the system can provide substantial benefit to a range of applications that are sensitive to atmospheric conditions. The initial focus will leverage the space and time resolution data to improve short-range weather forecasting especially for high impact events. The project objectives are to determine the technical feasibility and commercial potential of the system. These objectives will be met using a design-simulation cycle to study tradeoffs of system components and develop realistic cost estimates given the feasibility analyses. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project extends to many weather-sensitive sectors of the global economy including transportation, agriculture, air quality, and recreation that are estimated to be about $485 billion of the U.S gross domestic product. Such data could also provide calibration and validation for ground and space-based remote sensing of carbon dioxide and other green house gases linked with global climate change. The system could be configured to measure acoustic, magnetic, chemical, biological, nuclear, or other parameters of interest for surveillance, reconnaissance, and related applications. Measurements from the proposed system would be ideal for a multitude of research and operational missions where it is only economical and practical to perform high space and time density sampling over very limited domains. This capability can greatly enhance the scientific understanding of basic atmospheric processes, such as hurricane intensification and tornado formation, and ultimately lead to more accurate short-term forecasting of these and other hazardous weather events. The proposed wireless sensing system has high risk hardware and software innovations that enable significant market opportunities.